I have linked to some stuff on the incredible gender bias in healthcare before.

Here's a recent BuzzFeed piece, with 29 accounts of specific cases in which women's health concerns and pain were dismissed out of hand--and some of the indelible, lifelong negative consequences of said dismissal.

This is not new, and while it's more prevalent among male health providers, even female doctors and nurse practitioners have been indoctrinated into dismissing female pain as exaggerated. We are expected to soldier on, regardless, and we often do, because we also, often, have no choice.

But the fact that we take it doesn't alleviate the responsibility of those causing harm by dismissing our voices and our knowledge of our own bodies.

__________________

Support MyMedia, shop through our aStoreAlso found at my blog and twitter (adult language, adult topics, not always safe for work)
Ignoring annoying blowhards everywhere, for a good long time

It's very difficult for me, given current events, to find motivation to continue talking about the need for everyone--including women--to see everyone else--particularly women, both cis and trans, and gender fluid/gender queer people--as equals.

The current administration has declared April to be "Sexual Assault Awareness Month."

Irony has died.

The person signing this was caught on tape bragging about how he can "grab women by the genitals" and how "they let you do it when you are a celebrity." At the time, he was almost 60 years old, and his third wife was pregnant with his fifth child. He was making these remarks to a man on his middle thirties, in front of a crew of adult men.

And this behaviour was defended as "locker room talk"--as if the venue made it less demeaning to women--or dismissed as "boys will be boys"--as if grown ass men cannot be expected to behave like grown ass men if there are no women present.

This same person also signed a document just days earlier, eliminating protections for women in the workplace. Those arbitration clauses that allow companies to keep all sexual harassment complaints within the company's HR department, and forbid women employees from making these allegations public? Yeah, they are back in force.

The gender wage gap? Well, with that same signature on late March, this administration has made sure that companies and corporations do not have to disclose their pay rates to the government--which means, there will be no way to track the disparities in salaries and wages between men and women.

Yesterday was Equal Pay Day, which is the day when women, on average, would have made about the same money as men made, on average, the previous year. Three full months. Count them.

Women, on average, must work THREE more months than men, to make the same amount. Translated: women, on average, make 80 cents to the dollar what men, on average, make, for the same work, on the same positions.

Women continue to be penalized for being women--maternity leave? child care costs? personal days for a child illness or a special event? How many companies are okay with this? Beyond the corporate level, how many bosses--both male and female--make women pay (in stress, discomfort, derision) for being mothers?

We see ads for viagra and other erectile dysfunction meds all the time, and I can't recall many women complaining that they shouldn't pay for men to get prostrate exams as part of preventative care--but care for women is fair game.

It is exhausting to think about all of these things, and to know that many, if not most, of the men in our lives believe we, women, have it so good., that we live in a "post-sexism" age.

To have them dispute that workplace harassment is a real thing (instead of having them ask about our behaviour or wardrobe).

That sexism is the main reason we don't get that promotion (instead of having them tell us why we should just work harder, smarter, better).

If the people at the highest levels of public life are openly misogynistic, with little to none real, actual, tangible consequences*, it's incredibly difficult to hope that change will happen elsewhere.

And yet.

And yet, here I am still. Still writing about this. Still hoping that at least one person will read these and learn something.

*Being criticized in the press or social media, yet continue to hold office, means that there have been no consequences for this behaviour.

__________________

Support MyMedia, shop through our aStoreAlso found at my blog and twitter (adult language, adult topics, not always safe for work)
Ignoring annoying blowhards everywhere, for a good long time

A couple of months ago, Oklahoma State Representative Justin Humphrey kindly explained that women who become pregnant are merely hosts, stupidly deluded into thinking that it is their own body going through the pregnancy. Therefore, and whether that pregnancy is simply unplanned, not wanted, or the result of rape, those women 'invited it in' and should therefore be required to obtain the father's permission in order to obtain an abortion.

Because, as we all know, women are not actually human beings. We exist at the pleasure of men, and our only purpose is to be sexual objects and produce offspring.

Offspring for which we'll be later on fully responsible, emotionally, physically, and financially, while the father in question publicly declares that his money is his alone, and avoids paying child support for decades--a la, say, former Illinois Representative "deadbeat father" Joe Walsh.

And of course, fathers should have rights over the product of their sperm, right? How that sperm made it into a woman's uterus and became a fetus--such as violent rape, sexual abuse, etc--should have no bearing on men's sacred rights to their DNA. Which is why 17 states in this glorious nation have laws that give rapist parental rights, so not only mothers often forced to carry an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy to term; after that, they are forced, by law, to allow their rapist into their lives, and to make joint decisions on the lives of those children, until those children become adults.

What's 18 years of intimidation and trauma and fear for those mothers matter? We are talking the rights of men, after all.

Which is why is not surprising in the least that this April, during that ironically declared 'sexual violence awareness month,' an all-male committee in Maryland just didn't have the time to pass a bill that would eliminate the parental rights of rapists. For the NINTH time.

But hey, life is not already hard enough for women!

So this administration just eliminated the Let's Girl Learn initiative--after all, the wimmenz don't need to be learned in bed or the kitchen, right?

Not happy with that, the House just passed a lovely no-Health Care bill that, among other things, makes rape, pregnancy, c-sections, post-partum depression, and other things only women experience, pre-existing conditions. At the same time, that bill makes it possible for insurance companies to deny coverage due to---yes, you guessed it--pre-existing conditions.

So not only are year and lifetime caps back on the table, the protections that stopped health companies charging women more than men, simply for having the audacity of being born women, have been eliminated.

You know what's not a pre-existing condition in that lovely 'health' bill, though?

Erectile dysfunction.

Welcome to this world where "women have it so good."

__________________

Support MyMedia, shop through our aStoreAlso found at my blog and twitter (adult language, adult topics, not always safe for work)
Ignoring annoying blowhards everywhere, for a good long time

When I tell people that I'm a feminist, I am often told that I should stop worrying about catcalling and other harassment, because it's "not so bad," that I should worry more about things like FGM or child brides in other, frequently Muslim, countries. Because here, in the glorious USoA, women have it sooooo good already, we should stop with the whingeing and complaining.

However, being a whole person, I can care about multiple things, and, turns out, I am concerned about child brides.

Particularly child brides of the Christian variety in the USoA.

Right here, right now.

Girls as young as 10, some already having given birth from rape*, are forced by their own families to marry their rapist. Usually, this man is much older--an adult himself, so it can be anywhere from 10 to 15 years older than his 'bride.'

And, lest anyone say, "well, those crazy Amish, those crazy Mormons"...no. This happens in at least 38 states of the Union. Think about it. THIRTY EIGHT. And these are legal marriages, conducted by duly authorized officials, because most states don't even have a minimum legal age. So long as the parents are on board, girls can be married off. They cannot sign contracts, be employed, drive, open bank accounts, or even leave abusive marriages until they turn 18 (often, when they do, they are treated as minor runaways and returned to their abusive husbands).

In the United States of America, in 2017, this continues to happen.

Sit on that for a minute.

Best of all? The legislature is not comfortable changing the laws in most places. These laws are working so well, after all!

Yes, suppressing women's freedom to choose, not only whether to have children or not, but even whether to marry, has worked out really well--for men.

Because the immediate beneficiaries of these child marriages are the men who are raping these children. They avoid jail, and have legal power over another human being.

Tell me again how good women have it already in the US, tell me how we live in a post-sexism society.

~ * ~

*(violent or not, sexual abuse of a child is rape, period, because a child cannot consent; sex without explicit consent is rape, end of discussion)

He says it's not an anti-feminist statement, but a protest because the Girl is 'interfering' with the work of another artist (the creator of the Wall Street Charging Bull).

Never mind that the Girl is there for a limited time (extended to February 2018), after which it'll be shunted somewhere else, out of view.

Call me whatever you want, but I find it incredibly amusing that the little, innocent, peeing dog, was designed specifically to interfere (not interact) with the work of another artist (the creator of the Girl). Irony, dead.

Also endlessly amusing: the peeing dog creator didn't get a permit, and removed his work after about three hours--presumably, just long enough for people to post images to social media, and to get feminists riled up--because he didn't want someone (cops, maybe?) to 'take it.'

Male fragility, what you gonna do?

__________________

Support MyMedia, shop through our aStoreAlso found at my blog and twitter (adult language, adult topics, not always safe for work)
Ignoring annoying blowhards everywhere, for a good long time

I wouldn’t blame women for never wanting to interact with any man because so many of us are trash.

...

Yes, of course, toxic humans come in all sides. Men can be sexually assaulted, physically abused, and verbally taunted. This is all true. And still, men benefit from societies forcefully built by men. Women have typically been excluded, as we see with the “Founding Fathers” of the United States of America, and this is doubled and quadrupled for women of color. Women, and particularly women who present themselves in a feminine manner, do not have the benefit of male privilege. Even when men claim that a woman benefits from a masculine presentation or a queer identity, she is still a woman and is therefore seen as less than. Women cannot escape patriarchy.

A recent example is Serena Williams, one of the world’s greatest athletes. Period. Williams has been referred to as “too masculine.” There was once a debate over whether a horse should win “Sportsperson of the Year” over her. And just today, she was referred to as “Drake & Common’s Ex,” as if the only reason that we should care about a world-renowned tennis player is because she once dated two men. What may seem trivial to some is not actually trivial. Women cannot escape patriarchy.

...

So on our way to become “better men,” many marginalized groups have to deal with our learning process, bearing the brunt of the weight. In this case, it is most often women, femmes of all genders, nonbinary folk, and queer folks. Learning requires test subjects, and those test subjects are the recipients of all of the mistakes we have to make in order to unlearn the oppressive ways we interact with women and treat them as objects, not humans.

There was a strong perception among respondents that, in the words of one respondent, “men are seen as ‘special assets’ to be retained/promoted, while the women expected to fall by the wayside on the path to the top”. Another reported that her “senior male colleagues” feel “that the younger female employees make good assistants and secretaries but aren’t considered seriously for more creative/senior roles”.
Emily said: “It became a joke in the office with a very senior (sympathetic) male boss. When an editorial assistant was promoted after six months in a job to a position that could have been filled by a woman with more experience and equal talent, I’d ask why, genuinely wanting to know if he was super talented. He’d reply: ‘Because he has a dick.’”
...
“I’ve been asked specifically about whether I have or plan to have children (despite that question being illegal) in interviews and in work,” she said. “I already know I will lose respect, status and position if I go on maternity leave.”

In other news, water is wet, and we are all going to die eventually.

Tell me again how we live in a post-sexism society, how feminism is not only unnecessary but offensive, how feminists' only raison d'etre is to emasculate (most often white) men, and all the rest of that crap.

I'll be right over here, living in this pretty shitty reality.

__________________

Support MyMedia, shop through our aStoreAlso found at my blog and twitter (adult language, adult topics, not always safe for work)
Ignoring annoying blowhards everywhere, for a good long time

Because I'm fun like this: this is a link to a questionnaire to assess risk (generally for women, but really, anyone) of being immersed in an abusive/coercively controlling relationship. Those relationships, in case anyone wonders, are the ones that often devolve from control to mental/emotional abuse to physical abuse to, much too often, murder.

Overwhelmingly, these victims are women, either cis or trans. If you know anyone who fits this profile, or if you do, reach out. There are people out there willing to help you, for your own sake, or to help you help someone you care about.

__________________

Support MyMedia, shop through our aStoreAlso found at my blog and twitter (adult language, adult topics, not always safe for work)
Ignoring annoying blowhards everywhere, for a good long time